On April 23, a new party submitted enough valid signatures to qualify for the Puerto Rican ballot. It is the Puerto Ricans for Puerto Rico Party. Puerto Rico requires a petition signed by 5% of the number of registered voters, for a new party to qualify. This is the first time a new party has qualified in Puerto Rico since 1984. The party could not have succeeded, without the ballot access victory in the First Circuit in 2003. That case, called Perez Guzman v Gracia, struck down a Puerto Rico law that said no one could circulate the petition for a new party unless that person was both an attorney and a notary public. The First Circuit, based in Boston, has jurisdiction over Puerto Rico as well as over four New England states.
No a la Pena de Muerte en Puerto Rico.
No Federal Death Penalty in Puerto Rico.
Although I don’t belong to this party, I am glad to see that it finally managed to get registered. The party’s registration will become official on May 2nd, when the full Commission will approve the certification. It took them a long time, but they managed to comply with the difficult requirements. They took almost 2.5 years even with ad-hoc notaries because of: (1) the large number of signatures required, and (2) the fact that the other three parties control the process of validating the submitted petitions. I only hope that now that the PPR is part of the validating office, its personnel are friendlier to new groups than the other three parties.
Luis,
What’s the death penalty got to do with the registration of a new political party in Puerto Rico?
The state elections commission is supposed to ratify on May 2, 2007 that the PPR has become officially registered as an islandwide “by petition” party. However, there are rumblings from the electoral commissioners, particularly the PIP commissioner, stating that they (the electoral commissioners) could object to the certification. This is very worrysome, because it shows that the three registered parties do not want to share their perks with anybody else, even if the new group has complied with the legal requirements.
The issue here is about access to the ballot. Once that is cleared, then it is up to the PPR to convince the people of Puerto Rico that their candidates are superior to the candidates of the other parties. We’ll see what happens about that second part on election day 2008.